Read this piece for a bit of local colour, if you will. It turns out that Lex Hollman, owner of the SUPERSPAR and TOPS in Malelane is well-chuffed with his Pricer Electronic Shelf Labelling System, a product which caught his eye some ten years ago, but he has bought only recently, given the cost. Pricer, you see, don’t come cheap. But with 16,000 labels to manage in his SUPERSPAR alone, it turns out that it’s well worth the expense: it has enabled him to eradicate any discrepancy between till and shelf pricing (his policy is to honour the lower price) and to update prices in minutes, a process that used to take him a full day. And the system is not some mute bit of tape that sits on the shelves: it provides feedback, informing Lex that a price has been updated, that it might be incorrect, or that the label is obscured by a stray litre of milk. Finally, those labels are a lot more difficult for dishonest customers to switch for the purposes of claiming a lower price.

Comment: And that is how today’s modern retailer does it, housewives!

Informal traders have historically been unwilling to comply with municipal by-laws such as registration of business and trading in legal spaces and have also avoided paying tax pretty much ever. This has had its benefits, but has also robbed them of various opportunities, such as the ability to apply for grants or financial support, and to participate in government tendering and procurement processes which are weighted to the marginalised and previously-disadvantaged. Now, however, the sector seems to be pulling itself towards itself, with various informal associations calling for unity where there was none, and some indicating that now might be the time for more, not less, compliance. And the Gauteng Government seems intent on coming to the party, with plans to assist traders in registering their businesses, providing skills development and getting other stakeholders on board to address challenges of infrastructure and the high cost of setting up shop on the street.

Comment: That’s the way. The sector employs 3 million people at a time when every job counts, and the more that can be done to assist them the better.

In 2007, there were 3,899 dairy farmers in SA. By 2011, the bottom had dropped out of the market for short khakis, Grasshoppers and home-knitted bottle-green jerseys, and there were only 2,600 of them. Buying power by the majors is said to be the issue: the top five buyers purchase 65% of locally-produced milk and the big retailers set the prices, leaving the farmers precious little room to negotiate – at a time when veterinary bills are 10-15% higher, Eskom is hiking prices 16% and the minimum wage is up 52%. On the upside, SA is a net exporter of dairy products, with R3billions’ worth of the good stuff hitting the shelves internationally in 2011, although the competition out there is stiff, from places like the EU and New Zealand.

Comment: More smaller producers with less buying power would mean better prices for our embattled boere – although higher prices on the shelves for us. Tricky.

And in other news from the wide-open spaces beyond the cappuccino belt, Unilever are making strides in the sustainable sourcing of sunflower oil, offering financial incentives to two farmers in Limpopo to use higher-yield hybrid seeds and assisting in the education of farmworkers in such disciplines as first aid and farm and fire safety. This in keeping with Le Grand Bleu’s 2010 Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) which boldly proposes that the biz double its sales while halving its environmental impact – much of which happens not in the factory, but further up the supply chain, at farms like Zandfontein and Welbekend. Unilever’s Sustainable Agriculture Code specifies 11 indicators focusing on areas like biodiversity, water and soil management, and provides a roadmap for the improvement of current practices in farming.

Comment: But then farmers have always been an open-minded bunch, receptive to suggestions from well-dressed city gentlemen.

A glimmer of good news, particularly if you like the idea of trickle-down economics, and who doesn’t? The black middle class – defined as households earning more than R5,000 and being, well, black, is still growing, at the rate of three or four hundred thousand households a year, and this is being noticed not in overall GDP growth per se but in categories like vehicle sales, which are growing at the surprising rate of 19.5% year-on-year, at a time when most manufacturing categories can hope for 5% at best. Another interesting number is that black income (in its totality) has surpassed that of the white population for the first time in history, which is rather more of an indictment than otherwise, but which is nevertheless progress. Black income has grown about 34.5% in the past five years, and spending by black households has increased 541% from 2002 to 2011. All of this according to Azar Jammine, the most interestingly named economist this side of the Bosphorus.

Comment: Income inequality aside, this is a massive social shift in a short period of time. Well done us.

Rainbow’s plan to buy 64.2% of Foodcorp for the whacking sum of 1.037billions of rands (SA), has been given the curt nod of approval by the stern patricians of the Competition Tribunal subject to certain as yet undisclosed conditions, on the grounds that the deal is unlikely to adversely affect the competitive nature of the poultry market.

Sugar and golf estate barons Tongaat Hulett have just signed an historic accord with the Ingonyama Trust, which oversees the administration of 2.7million hectares of land in KZN by traditional leaders, for the development of cane farming on some of those lands. This will close the supply gap for the Avuncular One, and bring much-needed economic development and jobs to the poorer areas.